Beginning
by kalliopeia
Summary: The official story was that Spencer Reid happened into a profiling lecture at Caltech University. That he'd seen Jason Gideon give a lecture and asked so many questions that Gideon had finally given him a business card and told him to call. That the beginning had been innocent, curious, and perfectly Reid-like. The official story was not even close to true.


The official story was that Spencer Reid happened into a profiling lecture at Caltech University. That he'd seen Jason Gideon give a lecture and asked so many questions that Gideon had finally given him a business card and told him to call. That the beginning had been innocent, curious, and perfectly Reid-like.

The official story was not even close to true.

/

"Hey, kid-"

"Can I please go? I have work in an hour," Reid interrupted, planting hands on bony hips.

The officer looked confused. "You called your manager yesterday. You really figured you'd be out of here so soon?"

"I have three jobs," Reid said exasperatedly. "And yes. This is ridiculous."

The officer looked equally irritated. "Look, I'll get you a phone. We have an interviewer here."

"Four different people have interviewed me!"

"This one's a specialist."

/

Jason Gideon had no idea why, exactly, his specialty was needed. It was almost ridiculous, but he had a team of six very capable agents at home tracking the same serial bomber that had been magnificently eluding them for three months now, so it wasn't like he had anything better to do. Besides, the description he received on the phone- "A genius stabbed a guy and we think he's lying about it"- was decidedly intriguing.

He pushed the door open and blinked at the figure slumped before him with his head in his arms.

"How old are you?" he asked before he could help himself.

The figure lifted his head, rolling his eyes slightly. "Nineteen."

Gideon made a contemplative face. "Wow. Nineteen and two PhD's. Impressive, Doctor."

Reid looked startled at the use of his title. "Uh, thanks. Speaking of titles, what's yours?"

"SSA Jason Gideon."

The young man before him raised an eyebrow. "SSA. That's not Pasadena PD."

Gideon nodded. "FBI."

Reid's eyebrows nearly shot into his hairline. "FBI?! Are you fucking- Why?! Look, this is ridiculous. I didn't cross state lines. I'm telling everyone the truth. It was a justifiable homicide. I did not murder him."

"You put a knife between his shoulder blades."

"Yes, I happen to recall that," Reid said with a mild bite to his words. Honestly, Gideon didn't blame him. He could see that the kid was telling the truth. Still, he knew that the local police wouldn't let him go until he thoroughly interrogated the boy, so he pulled out the chair and sat down.

"You have an interesting history."

"You have no idea."

Gideon lifted a file. "Maybe some idea." He flipped it open. "Your father filed for divorce in 1992, causing your mother to lose her health insurance. Your mother never sued for alimony or child support. She'd lost tenure two years before because she left her teaching job mid-term, citing medical reasons. She had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia a few years prior to that."

Reid sat back. "Okay… And this tells you what, exactly?"

"That tells me very little. What tells me a lot is that you did not starve, neither you nor your mother were on welfare, and CPS has never heard of you," Gideon said, pursing his lips at the page.

"Really. That tells you a lot."

"What I do is called profiling."

Reid resisted the urge to snort. "I see." _Hokum._

"It's not," Gideon replied casually.

Reid squinted. "It's not what?"

"Hokum."

_Damn._ As much as Reid wanted to continue being bitchy- his very favorite defense mechanism on the rare occasion that statistics were insufficient- this was interesting.

"How does it work?" he blurted before making the conscious decision to do so.

"Sometimes it's what I'm doing now. Talking to someone to figure out whether they committed a crime, or what their state of mind is."

"Psych evals," Reid summarized.

"Yes. More often, though, it's looking at the evidence left in the aftermath of a crime or series of crimes to pin down the motives and personality traits of the criminal."

Reid raised an eyebrow. "And that works?"

"Yes," Gideon replied.

Spencer tilted his head. "It seems like… guesswork."

"More like deductive reasoning."

Reid decided to spend some time researching this somewhat bizarre field.

"So you're here to… what? Decide if I'm some kind of psychopath?"

"Sociopath, actually, but yes," Gideon replied. "What I learned from your history is that you almost certainly have some kind of criminal background. There's no other discernible way for you to acquire enough money to support yourself and your mother, especially with her medical needs."

"I sold homework," Reid muttered.

"That's a lot of homework."

"I dunno if they told you this, but I'm pretty smart."

"During summers?" Gideon asked.

Reid shrugged noncommittally. "I sold homework to the summer school people, and I tried to save up for it beforehand." Seeing Gideon's skepticism, he caved. "And I may have been somewhat of a pickpocket. It's past the statute of limitations, though."

"I'm sure it is, and I have no interest in prosecuting you for minor larceny anyway. The interesting point is that you must have been a fairly proficient pickpocket, because you have no official criminal record."

Reid sighed. "They busted me a couple of times. I was able to talk them out of booking me."

"There was a gun in your bag when the police here took you in," Gideon said, changing the subject slightly. "It's unregistered and illegal."

"And unloaded," Reid pointed out. "I have no idea how to use it. It's just a prop for scaring people off."

"The police tested the ballistics. It's connected to two open murder cases."

"Really? How long ago?"

"Seven and eight years ago."

Reid raised an eyebrow. "So your theory is that I'm a cold-blooded sociopath who started shooting people when I was eleven, but doesn't currently own ammo?"

This, Gideon decided, was an excellent point. "No. I'm just wondering where you got an unregistered weapon that's been used in gang hits."

"A friend gave it to me when I was thirteen," Reid admitted. "He was in a gang."

"How did you know him?"

"He was my dealer." At this point, Reid figured that the truth would be the least damaging. The truth he could defend. "When I was thirteen my mom's psychiatrist retired. We were referred to a new one, but he needed an intake appointment before he would resume the prescriptions and we couldn't afford it. I went looking for someone who could get it at close to regular price without a prescription. I found low-level teenager in a gang had a connection, he could get it for me."

"So you, at age thirteen, being white and somewhat tiny, went searching in the underbelly of Las Vegas for a drug dealer," Gideon summed up. "That can't have been safe."

"It wasn't. I was lucky the first time. The dealer gave me the gun afterwards. I didn't know how to fire it or aim or anything, and since I didn't have a permit I couldn't really go to a range to learn, but it kept people at bay." Reid's face darkened. "And I quickly learned that anyone showing too much interest in me could be removed by telling them where the same thing could be purchased a few blocks over."

"You were mistaken for a child prostitute?"

"Occasionally. Skinny white boys didn't tend to frequent that area for other reasons," Reid explained.

"You were the exception to the rule."

"I usually am."

Gideon had to give him that one. "So your dealer gave you a gun to scare off the hebophiles."

Reid nodded. "Yes. I've never fired a gun in my life, but it's a useful prop."

"Why didn't you use it against Mr. Gray?"

"I tried. He didn't pay attention to me," Reid told him. "He just ignored it."

Gideon nodded, knowing that such tunnel vision in an attack of that ferocity was quite typical. "Why did you keep the gun when you left Las Vegas?"

Reid shifted in his seat. "I went to college when I was fourteen. As it turns out, joining a closed community of adults when you're younger, weaker and more socially isolated than all of them is rather unsafe."

"You were assaulted."

"Yeah. Caltech is kind of a hotbed for child prodigies, though, so we grouped together," Reid explained. "Until we were old enough that we were safe, we used the buddy system, we carried weapons. That's when I got the knife and pepper spray. We worked hard to keep ourselves safe."

"Was it enough?" Gideon asked quietly.

"Usually." From his eyes, Gideon knew that in this case, 'usually' was a code word for 'no.'

"Usually isn't enough in a situation like that."

Reid shrugged. "Nothing happened to me, but a lot of the others… My friends…"

"We ran Gray's fingerprints. They matched that of an open rape case. The victim was a fourteen year old girl."

Reid looked up. "What?"

Gideon pulled out a file and slid it across the table. One showed a photo of Marcie Finnegan's bruised arm. A much younger Spencer Reid was holding onto her hand. Although he was out of focus, the distress on his face was obvious.

"She was your friend."

"T-the guy I killed, he was, he was…" Reid trailed off.

"Yes," Gideon said, "he was the rapist."

Reid gritted his teeth, memories flooding over him. "Would he have ever stopped?" he finally choked out.

"What?" Gideon asked, surprised.

"Gray! Would he have ever stopped? You're a profiler, would he have ever stopped hurting people?" Reid asked, almost desperately.

"Probably not. Not without something drastic happening, anyway."

Reid grimaced and put his head in his hands.

Gideon didn't say a word, knowing the kid was so full of emotions he would burst with the slightest pressure. He just had to wait.

Reid gritted his teeth, trying to keep the words from pouring out of him, but finally he gave in. "I'm glad he's dead! I'm glad he won't hurt anyone else. Maybe now Marcie will be able to leave the house without shaking. Maybe she won't wake up screaming in the middle of the night. If nothing else, he won't do it to anyone else, he won't destroy another person."

"You're glad you killed him?"

"No!" Reid nearly screamed, pushing the tears off his face almost violently. "God, I took a life, okay? That's not good, it's not fun! I'm not glad I had to do that, I'm just glad someone did. He was trying to hurt her and I had to- I didn't have a choice!"

Gideon sighed. "The problem we have is that we can't find the girl. There's no security camera or anything- no evidence that she ever existed in the first place."

"So you think, what, there was no girl? That I cornered him and killed him based on some crazy revenge fantasy because of what happened to Marcie?" Reid demanded.

"I don't think that. I believe you. The local police believe that."

"I didn't even know who he was," Reid said, dropping his head into his arms.

"If you had known, what would you have done?" Gideon asked. "Would you have gone after him?"

"No. I would have told the police. I knew they had fingerprint evidence. I trust the system, all right? Or I did, before this whole fiasco," Reid grumbled.

"I'm sorry. The system isn't set up for the unusual," Gideon replied. He smiled slightly. "The police had no idea what to do with you."

"Yeah, no one ever does," he said with a resigned sigh.

Gideon nodded, standing up. "I believe you. I'm going to go talk to the police officers, see if I can negotiate your release."

/

"Are you going to arrest him?" the police chief asked when Gideon walked into his office.

"Arrest him? I'm thinking about hiring him," Gideon said calmly. "You were very wrong about him. He's not a sociopath. He's not evil. He's just a kid who happens to be very smart and very brave."

Just then, the door opened. "Hey, chief? You wanted any updates on the Gray killing… The witness turned up. She's rattled, but fine. She confirms the suspect's story, as do the bruises on her arms."

Gideon turned to the chief. "There you have it. Can I go cut him loose?"

The chief, looking almost depressed by the fact that he wasn't living in a psychological thriller, nodded.

/

Reid looked up when the door opened again.

Gideon was leaning against the doorframe. "You're free to go. Also, do you want a job?"

"Uh, I have a job. Three of them. I don't really have time…"

"Quit those. The FBI will pay whatever you need for talents like yours."

Reid blinked. "I'm sort of in the middle of getting another PhD at the moment."

"Another one?" Gideon asked, impressed. Reid nodded. "Right, well, finish that, then call me."

/

Just over a year later, Spencer Reid was standing in the bullpen of the BAU. He'd ended up on Agent Hotchner's team, as Gideon was still off duty recovering from his entire team being blown up. Reid was fresh out of the academy, with a brand new agent certification and a gun strapped to his hip.

He watched the lineup of agents watching him, none of which saying a word. His new boss, Agent Hotchner, had the most terrifying eyebrows he'd ever seen. The blonde woman beside him seemed nice enough. The large black man next to her was looking at Reid with disdain.

"Are they serious? He's the new agent? C'mon, Hotch, we're an FBI unit, not a babysitting service," the man complained.

Reid smiled a little, perfectly content with the knowledge that he'd show them.

Fin.


End file.
